


Silence

by aparticularbandit



Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: F/F, but this is angst, it's not true, sometimes i think the only thing i can write is angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 19:14:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16708429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aparticularbandit/pseuds/aparticularbandit
Summary: When they told her she couldn’t have her cake and eat it, too, she’d thought, maybe, if she only took a little piece of it and left the rest, then she could have both.  But if she kept the cake too long, it would grow moldy, wasted, useless.  Cakes weren’t made to be kept.  They were made to be eaten.And maybe, she thought, as she closed her eyes, pretending that Rose would still be here when she woke up, knowing that she wouldn’t be, she was, too.





	1. Chapter 1

“He sold you out.”

“I know.”  Luisa sat in her chair, facing away from the other woman, facing the window instead, gazing out on the lake and the trees and the early morning mist that spread across its surface.  “What did you tell him?”

“Does it matter?”

“No.  I guess not.”

The birds were silent this morning.  Sometimes, when she woke up, Luisa could hear them greeting each other across the water, a caw here, a caw there, and if she turned in bed just right, she could see them flying low over the lake, swooping in to pick out their breakfast.  Other times, she put her pillow over her head to drown them out so that she could stay asleep just a few minutes longer, but those times had been happening less and less frequently.

The silence didn’t last long before the other woman spoke again.

“He sold you out, Luisa.  He doesn’t love you.  Let’s go.”

“I sold _you_ out.”

She still hadn’t moved.  Sometimes she wished she’d had a rocking chair added to her room, instead of this stiff one.  Not that she would be intentionally rocking right now, but it was just the image of it – her, wrapped in the forest green sweater that was once her mother’s, staring out on the cool of the lake in the early mornings or evenings, silently rocking with nothing to say and no one to say it to.  Maybe she could pick up knitting.  She didn’t think she’d be good at hats or sweaters or anything that luxurious, but she could maybe learn how to knit scarves.  Then she could offer them to her family, or what remained of it, nice warm scarves that had absolutely no use in Miami’s heat.  But she would have made them with her own two hands.  That would count for something, wouldn’t it?

“Your brother was using you to get to me.  To get to Eileen.  Who turned out to be me.  There’s a difference.”

“You were using him to get to me.  Where’s the difference?”

If she had a rocking chair, she could break up the silence with the creaking of the chair.  A new one maybe wouldn’t have that sound, but nothing around here was new.  In fact, she could just as easily go out of her way to pick one up at an antique store.  There were a lot of those around here, a lot of used furniture.  Besides, it would have fit the aesthetic of the hotel better.  Wouldn’t her father be proud of her?  She’d wanted to be a medical doctor and save people, and in the end, she’d just become another hotel worker, just like he was.

At least it was peaceful out here.  Most of the time.

“I love you.”

“I love him.”

“He doesn’t love you.  He gave you up.”

“I gave you up.  Does that mean I don’t love you?”

See, she struggled with this.  Maybe Rose didn’t.  For her, everything always seemed so black and white.  Not _right and wrong_ , necessarily, but there were clear cut answers.  For her, nothing seemed that clear cut.  She thought, maybe, at one point in time, it had been.  Before college, maybe.  Before she’d started drinking just to get through the day.  Was drinking what turned all that stark contrast into an unending grey?  Or was it always grey and she’d just noticed it somewhere along the way and started drinking because that was the only thing that brought the color back?

“No.”

“Then giving me up doesn’t mean he doesn’t love me.”

“It just means that there are things that are more important to him than you.”

“So my giving you up means that there are things that are more important to me than you?”

Another silence, and this time she welcomed it.

“My giving you up for _him_ means that _he_ is more important than you?”

It was a question but it didn’t feel like a question.  It held too much weight to it.

“Isn’t that really the problem?”

Even without the rocking chair, if she were knitting, there would at least be the little tap and clink of the needles against each other.  Metal ones, not plastic ones.  It’d be a nice, continuous sound.  Something to focus on instead of the creak of the rocking chair or the cawing of the birds as they flew overhead.  Something to feel in the silence in their absence.  She missed the creak of the palm fan in their house in the Caymans.  Rose hated it.  She didn’t like the incessant sound, and although for Luisa it faded into the background as just another part of their life, something that wasn’t _perfect_ the way hotels had to be, for Rose, she knew, it was something else.  Whenever they fought, she’d brought it up.  It made her worse.  Instead of yelling at Luisa, she’d yell at the fan.  Maybe that was really why she’d liked it.

“Luisa, I don’t hate you for choosing him.”

“I know.”  Of course she does.  “I don’t hate him for choosing… _whoever_ it was he chose this time.”

“It’s not the same.”

“It is.”

“No.”

She wanted to feel Rose’s hand on her shoulder.  That’s what she wanted.  She wanted her to yell and snap and be _frustrated_ with her, not this…whatever this was.  This didn’t feel like Rose.  This wasn’t like her.  It felt _wrong_.  Unreal.

“When he sells you out, the only thing you feel is emotional pain.  He doesn’t have to make a choice because there are no real consequences.  But every time you choose him—“

“So you admit that they _are_ the same?”

“No.”

Luisa imagined that she could see Rose in the reflection of the glass window.  She wanted to see that, to see her standing behind her, struggling to find words for something she knew in her heart but couldn’t logically explain.  It would be nice to see her the way she saw herself.  Not confused, but not knowing how to express her truth.  No, it wouldn’t be _nice_.  That wouldn’t be nice at all.  It would be stealing something from her.  She didn’t want to steal from Rose.

“He can have both.  You have _tried_ , and it ended up with me _in jail_.”

She waited.

“Luisa, I can’t go back to jail.”

She wanted to hear it.

“Luisa, if I go back to jail, they might give me the death penalty.”

Where was it?

“Luisa, _I could die._ ”

There.

“Every time we come back here, you are risking my _life_.”

There it was.

“For _him_.”

The desperation.

“And he doesn’t even _care_.”

The frustration.

“We can’t keep doing this.”

Luisa wasn’t crying.  She’d told Rafael when he visited that she’d been more stable since coming here, and that was true.  She’d been sober, too, and that was the miracle of it.  Away from everything, she’d felt _free_.  It was nice.  It was comforting.  It wasn’t like a cold drink of water on a hot summer day or a warm blanket while it was snowing outside or even the crackle of a fireplace on Christmas Eve, but it was…it was _something_.  Maybe like cleaning the dirt out from under her nails or picking a scrap of meat out from where it’d been stuck between her teeth.

“I can’t choose between the two of you.”

“Yes, you can.”

That same frustrated desperation.

“Choose _me_.”

Only she didn’t say it.  She didn’t have to.

And just like Rose didn’t have to say it, Luisa didn’t have to remind her, again, that she _couldn’t_.

“I can’t stay.”

“I can’t go.”

“Luisa, they will _find_ me.  They will—“

Her bare feet didn’t make any sound as she moved across the hardwood floor.  Neither did her hands when she cupped Rose’s cheeks.

“Then _go_.”

_I won’t make you stay any longer._

She tried to smile, forced her lips to move into the proper position, but there was no mirth there.

Rose had left her before.  Rose had left her a thousand different times in a thousand different ways, promising her over and over that what they were doing meant nothing and then promising her over and over that it _did_ mean something, that it was the most important thing in the world.  Rose had left her with a broken heart while whispering thoughts of love and throwing her own suggestion to run away together back at her.

She hadn’t meant to be cruel.  She never _meant_ to be cruel.  Not to her.

But she never meant _not_ to be, either.

Rose bent down to kiss her, and Luisa wanted to tell her to stop but she couldn’t, and Rose knew that, too.  Knew and didn’t care.  Didn’t care that the fingers moving from her cheek to tangle with her hair didn’t want this temptation just as much as they couldn’t deny it, didn’t care that the small of her back broke under the weight of her touch on her bare skin no matter how gentle it was, didn’t care that the clothes she was so carefully discarding were her armor and without them she would break, _didn’t care_ that without her Luisa felt incomplete and that after this final spine-shattering moment she would emotionally always feel like she was walking with a cane when before she could have _flown_.

She did not _want_ to lie in this bed with her, knowing that she would leave again, knowing that when she was done there would only be here and this new but old hotel and the silence that would not be filled with creaking or needles or birds or laughter or yelling.

But she couldn’t tell her _no_ , either.  She’d _tried_.  When they told her she couldn’t have her cake and eat it, too, she’d thought, maybe, if she only took a little piece of it and left the rest, then she could have both.  But if she kept the cake too long, it would grow moldy, wasted, useless.  Cakes weren’t made to be kept.  They were made to be eaten.

And maybe, she thought, as she closed her eyes, pretending that Rose would still be here when she woke up, knowing that she wouldn’t be, she was, too.


	2. Epilogue

When Luisa woke up, she marveled at the form of the woman still beside her, unsure if she were really here or if it was just her imagination running away with her again.  She brushed her fingers along the freckles dotting Rose’s left shoulder, and Luisa’s touch, accompanied by the sharp _caw_ of a bird swooping across the lake, startled her, causing her ice blue eyes to snap open, her breath short and quick as her gaze swept around her before finally stopping on Luisa.  Then her breathing stilled, slowed as the tension in her body faded away.

“You stayed.”

It wasn’t a question, but it was, lingering in the air between them.  The fan overhead gave a sharp shuddering groan while Rose’s eyes shifted, looking away but not at any specific thing.

“So do you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had this bit done for almost a month and wanted to wait to post it and then kept /forgetting/ to post it. Oops. BUT HERE. Sometimes there's more sweet in bittersweet.


End file.
